Exactly! For some reason, Jack posted a tweet that would probably mislead most of the newcomers:
With Strike, the Argentinian people can now hold a stable cash balance that can be spent both instantly and with no fees.
I believe Jack meant direct transactions here when Bitcoin is used only as an intermediary between two Stike accounts that have, say, balances in $ or EUR.
Strike is an application that allows Lightning payment transactions with just a debit card or bank account. However, its peculiarity is that instead of having to buy bitcoins to load their Lightning channels, Strike users do not have to use BTC.
In other words, you pay in fiat, but you use Lightning. If you want to convert fiat to bitcoin, you transact in Lightning and pay through Strike.
According to Mallers, “This is important because Strike users are not exposed to volatility, tax consequences, custodial challenges, node management, channel management, etc. When a user makes a Lightning payment with Strike, their balance is debited. When a user receives a payment on Strike, their balance is credited.”
I have to admit that I have only looked at Stike through the prism of El Salvador so far, but some things are a little clearer to me now - because this is about paying in fiat using LN without BTC being directly involved in the transaction. In fact, person A sends $1000 to person B using Strike who transfers that amount to person B's wallet free of charge using LN and converts back to fiat.
Let’s take a practical example: Paula wants to send €1,000 (balance available in the Strike App) to her friend Ana in France. Strike debits the required amount from the user’s linked account or available balance and converts it into Bitcoin. Strike moves the Bitcoins on the Lightning network in less than a second and at no cost.
Then, the same application automatically converts the bitcoins back into euros and will credit the user’s account.